To hear Emil Henry tell it, climbing the Matterhorn at 55 years old wasn't so difficult. There was little training, only to be tested on skills, endurance and altitude sickness; it wasn't even a life's dream.
Emil Henry
"As tall, high mountains go, it's probably the easiest of all the high mountains in the Alps now," Henry said of the summit that has seen 431 deaths, 58 in the 21st century alone.
Researching and writing a biography of Edward Whymper, the first person ever to scale the 14,690-foot mountain, however, became a monumental task of endurance, travel and expense. And a challenge he wouldn't give up for anything.
"It turned out to be the most enjoyable occupation of my life," Henry said of the book, "Triumph and Tragedy: The Life of Edward Whymper" ($18.31).
Henry, now 82 with three children and five grandchildren, began life in Memphis, growing up in Chickasaw Gardens before going away to a boarding high school in Pennsylvania and college at Yale. He joined the Navy during the Korean War, spending three years on a destroyer in the Pacific Ocean, and then went to Vanderbilt for law school.
After practicing law in Memphis for five years, he was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission in 1962. When the chairman resigned only eight months later, Henry was appointed, "at the ripe old age of 34," chairman of the FCC by President John F. Kennedy.
It was in 1963, while in Geneva for a conference as the FCC representative, that Henry was first approached with the idea of climbing the Matterhorn. "I don't do that," he said. "It's not my thing." He reconsidered 21 years later when a business colleague suggested he contact mountain guide Rickie Andenmatten.
"My guide (Andenmatten) said, 'Emilio, you're going to get waked up at 4 o'clock, get dressed, eat a light breakfast, we're going to walk out the door at 4:30 and it's action, action, action'," Henry said. "We got to the top of the Matterhorn at 9:30."
It took five hours to scale the mountain and four hours to descend, Henry said. "My legs were jelly."
The Matterhorn is part of the Swiss Alps and sits on the border of Italy and Switzerland. With its iconic summit and difficulty to conquer, it was known during the Golden Age of Mountaineering (1854-1865) as the "impossible mountain."
Edward Whymper was a young Englishman -- only 25 at the time he became the first to scale the Matterhorn in 1865 -- who would also become an accomplished author, artist, photographer, lecturer and natural scientist who researched the causes of altitude sickness. "He was many things, and this book is about all of those things."
It was the discovery in a Zermatt bookstore of Whymper's own book, "Scrambles Amongst the Alps," first published in 1871 and still in print in an abridged version in 1984, that led to Henry's fascination with the adventurer. Whymper wrote several other books, but the only full biography on the man was one published in 1940. "It was highly dated and highly opinionated, and it did not give a full picture of the man, in my opinion," Henry said.
So Henry set about to write a comprehensive book about not only Whymper, but also the circumstances surrounding the Golden Age of Mountaineering, the physical challenges, triumphs and tragedies, and the majestic mountains themselves. "Part of the allure of this book was due to the romantic appeal of the Alps themselves and the Alpine regions," he said. "Chapter 3 is only about the Alps, how they were formed in geological time, what they look like, how they differ from the Himalayas, the spirited amateurs who climbed them, the chalets and haylofts where the climbers found shelter. I compare the early mountaineers to the aviation pioneers."
The writing was an expedition in itself, taking Henry to England, Wales, Switzerland, France and Italy. "I wanted to do justice to the man, I wanted it to be a serious biography ... so I spent a lot of time at the Alpine Club Library in London."
It was all research paid for out of his own pocket, he said, adding, "I'm not in it for the money." There were several publishing houses and agents interested in the manuscript, including several in the United States and Random House in London. "I finally decided that companies and agents were not going to publish an octogenarian, unpublished lawyer." He ultimately self-published the 428-page book through Troubador Publishing in the UK, where Whymper is vastly better known.
The book is for sale through all online retailers, as an e-book and at the Booksellers of Laurelwood, where Henry recently held a reading and book signing.
The Golden Age of Mountaineering ended with Whymper's ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865, not because he proved the "impossible mountain" could be conquered, but quite the opposite. On the descent, four members of his team plummeted thousands of feet to their deaths, the worst tragedy in mountain climbing history. The sport has changed over the years with improved technology and a better understanding of the conditions the human body can withstand.
But what haven't changed are the public's fascination with the environment and man's need to push himself and challenge the unknown within. In his book, Henry explores the life of a true adventurer and a theme which helped Henry push himself to the summit.
"What I tried to do and what I've done, I think, is to create the story of this man's life and, in so doing, illuminate as best I can his character and the things that set him aside from other people," Henry said. "So it's not just about mountaineering, but mountaineering ... goes a long way in explaining the kind of man he was."
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